text:
"An affordable, reliable supply of energy is crucial to America's economic future. I have a vision for an America that is an energy superpower, rapidly increasing our own production and partnering with our allies Canada and Mexico to achieve energy independence on this continent. If I am elected president, that vision will become a reality by the end of my second term." —-Mitt Romney
There is something that sounds noble, seductive and patriotic about calling for energy independence. We have heard it mostly from politicians at least as far back as Richard Nixon. The reason is that achieving true energy independence in a world of energy inter-dependence may not be the best strategic, economic or practical choice for America. But I come here mostly to praise the Romney Energy Plan not to trash it. He had the good sense to say that while he too would aspire to energy independence he recognizes it has been an elusive dream.
The Romney Agenda on energy consists of the following key elements:
• Empower states to control onshore energy development including on Federal lands;
• Open offshore areas for energy development;
• Pursue a North American Energy Partnership with Canada and Mexico;
• Ensure accurate assessment of energy resources;
• Restore transparency and fairness to permitting and regulation; and
• Facilitate private-sector-led development of new energy technologies.
So far, so good, but the devil is in the details of Governor Romney's Energy Plan. It is a good read with lots of references to studies and the work of others to suggest a thoughtful analysis has taken place to cull out those that disagree with the Governor's plan. But this is politics after all and we're glad to know where the candidates stand on these important issues BEFORE we vote in November.
Governor Romney also makes his economic case for this new energy policy saying that it would help create more than three million new jobs including encouraging more than one million of them in manufacturing. Clearly, unleashing America's domestic energy production and using it to drive down the price of oil and natural gas would be good for the economy. We are actually seeing that happen right now from the new energy production growth taking place on private lands that are beyond the regulatory reach of the Federal Government. Governor Romney's energy plan might speed up energy induced job creation primarily by getting the Federal Government out of the way of progress.
In fact, the biggest indictment of the Obama energy strategy in place today is the fact that 96% of America's domestic energy growth the President is trying to take credit for happened on private lands beyond the reach of his bureaucrats and regulators. Energy production growth on Federal lands, offshore and in areas in Alaska and elsewhere already designated for E&P activity have actually gone down. The President's official energy policy of 'all of the above' is actually a policy of stopping or slowing down 'all of the above' fossil fuel development possible while stimulating and subsidizing 'all of the above' renewable energy possible—and take credit for the rest that happens anyway.
If Mitt Romney wins the 2012 election with any margin that can pass the laugh test as a mandate he should want his energy plan to be on record laying out what he will do to change the energy dynamics to help get us closer to that elusive energy independence goal. This Romney energy plan is a good start but it is missing a few elements that would make it truly transformational.
In addition, the Romney Energy Plan says:
• States will be empowered to establish processes to oversee the development and production of all forms of energy on federal lands within their borders, excluding only lands specially designated off-limits;
• State regulatory processes and permitting programs for all forms of energy development will be deemed to satisfy all requirements of federal law;
• Federal agencies will certify state processes as adequate, according to established criteria that are sufficiently broad, to afford the states maximum flexibility to ascertain what is most appropriate; and
• The federal government will encourage the formation of a State Energy Development Council, where states can work together along with existing organizations such as STRONGER and the IOGCC to share expertise and best management practices.
What's missing in the Romney Energy Plan:
If Romney wins he has ONE CHANCE to reform the way energy development and regulation takes place in the US. Today there are two basic problems: First, the Federal Government control so much land especially in the Western states that the states are mere bystanders to most of the energy development potential in their states. The Romney plan gives states more of a voice but very little authority to do anything more except become the administrative agent of the Federal Government.
Nuts to that!
The second problem is much of our energy infrastructure is interstate but we have made a muddled mess of siting and permitting on oil and gas pipeline side and only then after endless agencies pile on with their regulatory reviews. On the electric power side we continue to allow electric transmission to be a state by state regulated business which means NIMBY rules the process and little gets built relative to our needs. This is no way to energy independence nor anything approaching a smarter, more efficiency and secure grid.
Here's what's missing in the Romney Energy Plan:
1. Turn Federal Lands Over to the States. Except for designated national parks and preserves, military facilities, offshore development beyond a specified distance and similar lands required for actual Federal purposes, The Romney Plan misses the best opportunity to reinforce our Federalist system by ceding ownership and control of the rest of Federal lands to the states once and for all. This dramatically reduces the mischief potential, interference and political hassles by the Federal bureaucrats and special interests groups over land use issues that are not strategic to the Federal Government. Let the states determine what to do with Federal lands based upon their own strategic interests.
2. Require Independent Cost Benefit Analysis of Environmental Law Impacts and an Equitable Balancing of Economic and Environmental Interests as the definition of the Public Interest. The Romney Plan ignores the reality of our broken Federal environmental processes and rulemaking. I recognize that is not a fight they want to pick BEFORE the election but our environmental laws are one-sided and fail to require balancing of their economic consequences against the environmental benefits. Agencies own no burden to prove the proposed environment actions are reasonable in balancing public and private interests. Federal bureaucrats are really in business for themselves because Congress ducks the hard decisions in passing legislation and leaves it to the agencies to write the rules. This must stop. The Romney plan should call on Congress to require an independent cost benefit analysis of every major Federal rulemaking, a sunset process to force periodic review of existing rules, and require that Congress approve the final rules proposed BEFORE any law passed requiring rules goes into effect. Environmental laws should be amended to require a test of equitably balancing proposed environmental benefits against their cost and impact on private property rights. The Government should be required to pay private property owners when the costs exceed the benefits measured by standardized objective criteria applied across all case. This would stop the abuse of environmental litigation and out of control rulemaking.
3. Give FERC clear authority over Interstate Energy Regulation and Permitting. The Romney Plan fails to solve the vexing problem of duplicitous regulatory reviews by states and Federal agencies. This problem must be fixed is he has any chance of achieving that elusive dream of energy independence because it is the primary reason we have not achieved it so far. The Romney Plan should fix this by making FERC the lead energy and environmental regulator for ALL interstate energy development, transportation, electric transmission, wholesale ratemaking and environmental regulation.
4. Reform Federal Rulemaking. The Romney Energy Plan wimps out completely on this essential reform. The Romney Plan should require Federal agencies to own a burden of proving that the benefits of a proposed rule outweigh the costs and that the rules are reasonable and in the public interest. This should be done in an independent review process before an independent administrative law judge. Every action that is related to interstate energy should be handled through a FERC docket. Everything else through the Administrative Law Judge system in place using the same standard criteria for cost benefit analyses. If the agencies cannot own their burden of proof and withstand cross examination by interveners in the rulemaking then the ALJ should reject the rule and tell the agency to start over. This would force all the interested parties to make their case and settle their differences before a final rule is presented to Congress for an up or down vote. It should dramatically reduce the cost of endless delays, litigation and lobbying.
5. Get Back to Basic Research and out of picking winners and losers. The Romney Plan calls for ensuring transparency in accurate energy resource assessments and facilitate private-led efforts on new technology development. This is too squishy for me and fails to address the real need for reform in the following key areas:
a) Fund Basic Science and Technology Research at Federal Labs and agencies like DARPA and stop Federal agencies picking winners and losers or acting like venture capitalists.
b) Force a Sunset Review of Ethanol, Renewable Fuel Standards, Boutique Fuels, CAFÉ and other similar Federal mandates and subsidies including loan guarantees, production and investment tax credits and other tax incentives that limit competition, drive up the costs to consumers or create a corporate welfare entitlement for solutions that are not sustainable in competitive markets.
There is much to be said for the Romney Energy Plan. It is a good start but it is not sufficient to make the kind of fundamental transformation changes needed in our energy and environmental laws and policies to have a reasonable chance of achieve that elusive energy independence dream.
By. Gary Hunt


text:
SALISBURY — Salisbury officials this week announced the city has accepted nearly $38,000 in grants from the Maryland Department of Housing and Community Development for the Emergency Solutions Grant Program.
Four organizations in Salisbury will be the beneficiaries of the grants totaling $37,875. Diakonia, Inc., Village of Hope and Samaritan Ministries, Inc. will each receive $10,250 each from the grant program. The funding will be utilized to assist with the operations costs for the four shelters.
"The City of Salisbury has been involved with passing through funds to emergency homeless shelters since 2006," said Assistant City Administrator Lore Chambers. "The funds provide resources for operations, maintenance and administrative support. With the ending of the Homeless Prevention, Rapid Re-Housing stimulus fund program, these resources are needed more and more."
Chambers said the funding level represents an increase of $7,726 over last year.
"The Department of Housing and Community Development increased awards to the city of Salisbury this funding round in recognition of the growing need due to the increase in homelessness in our community and on the Lower Eastern Shore," she said. "With the lack of affordable housing, job losses and increased foreclosure rates, families are utilizing homeless shelters in greater numbers than in previous years."

subset: commoncrawl


text:
There is no more trusted mentor of preachers in North American Christianity today than William H. Willimon. The author of over sixty books, a frequent preacher and teacher in pastors' schools and events, Willimon has earned a following as one of the people to whom preachers turn more often than any other. Turner and Malambri make Willimon's role as a mentor to preachers more available than ever. Both former students of Willimon's, they provide detailed and practical tools for learning from this "peculiar prophet." They offer samples of Willimon's sermons, and commentary on them by other leading preachers and homiliticians such as Tom Long and Peter Gomes.
The point of this examination of Willimon's work is not simply to praise it, but to assess both its strengths and its weaknesses, and to help readers learn in the process how Willimon can be a model of what to do and--at times--what not to do in the pulpit. Written with the needs of practicing preachers in mind, this book will make a significant contribution, not only to understanding a great preacher, but also to preaching itself.


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Date(s) - 11/29/2019
5:30 pm - 10:00 pm
L.A. County Arboretum
310 N. Baldwin Ave.
Arcadia, CA,
$25-$28 adults, $23-$25 students; $20-$23 ages 3-17.
5:30-10 p.m. Wed.-Sun. Nov. 9-Jan. 12. The Moonlight Forest rises again at the L.A. County Arboretum and Botanic Garden. Bigger and brighter for its second year, this magical, interactive lantern art festival unveils two new themes: Polar Dreams and Ocean Visions. A lovely winter wonderland, the Polar Dreams experience features playful penguins and cuddly sled dogs. In the Ocean Visions exhibit, visitors can go under the sea with exotic fish and giant sharks. Enjoy other themes as well as entertainment by live acrobats, dancers and other performers. Plus, there's free parking. There is timed ticket entry (5:30 p.m., 7 p.m., 8 p.m.) and it's highly encouraged to get your tickets in advance.


text:
Andrew Pidcock
Andrew Pidcock (also known as Loopy Wolf) is a furry artist and fursuiter who loves werewolves and gargoyles, and writes fiction for fanzines such as Fang Claw & Steel. He holds a MSc in computer science, and currently resides in Montreal, Québec, where he is the founder and administrator of the local furry community, MonFur.
Loopy is a traditional artist, working entirely in acrylic paints. He also has a number of webcomics as well, such as Were I Wolf and Macro and Vore. The latter has gotten a small cult-following, especially amongst furs who have been in the fandom a while, for the satirical humour of the strip about the furry fandom and furries in general. His art is featured on a number of art sites, such as DeviantArt, FurAffinity, VCL and Yerf.
Loopy is also known for his fursuits, primarily Loopy (a werewolf/husky mixed breed, the source of his fan name,) Korul al-Wassar (a gargoyle with fully-articulated wings,) and Heraldry the Gryphon (also with fully-articulated wings), plus the 24-foot long fire-breathing dragon, Mighty Wing Lung Puff which won his him world-masters costuming title.
He is skilled in jewelry making, sculpting and game design. He works on commission, making custom plushies and costumes for people. He is often teaching at cons, art, costumes or games.
Loopy is the sole author of the Furst Force Mod for the game Freedom Force.
This person is a WikiFur user: |
External links[edit]
- WolfWares - Official Website
- American Journal of Anthropomorphics #4, pp 61-64


text:
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Why Do I Fight With My Parents So Much?
The clothes you wear. The food you eat. The color of your bedroom walls. Where you go and how you get there. The people you hang with. What time you go to bed.
What do these things have in common, you're asking? They're just a few examples of the many hundreds of things that your parents controlled for you when you were a child. As a kid, you didn't have a say in very much that went on; your parents made decisions about everything from the cereal you ate in the morning to the pajamas you wore at night. And it's a good thing, too — kids need this kind of protection and assistance because they aren't mature enough to take care of themselves and make careful decisions on their own.
But eventually, kids grow up and become teens. And part of being a teen is developing your own identity — one that is separate from your parents'. It's totally normal for teens to create their own opinions, thoughts, and values about life; it's what prepares them for adulthood.
But as you change and grow into this new person who makes his or her own decisions, your parents may have a difficult time adjusting. They aren't used to the new you yet — they only know you as the kid who had everything decided for you and didn't mind.
In most families, it's this adjustment that can cause a lot of fighting between teens and parents. You want to cover your walls with posters; they don't understand why you don't like your kiddie wallpaper anymore. You think it's OK to hang at the mall every day after school; they would rather that you play a sport.
Clashes like these are very common between teens and parents — teens get angry because they feel parents don't respect them and aren't giving them space to do what they like, and parents get angry because they aren't used to not being in control or they disagree with the teens' decisions.
It's easy for feelings to get very hurt when there are conflicts like these. And more complicated issues — like the types of friends you have or your attitudes about sex and partying — can cause even bigger arguments, because your parents will always be intent on protecting you and keeping you safe, no matter how old you are.
The Upside
The good news about fighting with your parents is that in many families the arguing will lessen as parents get more comfortable with the idea that their teen has a right to certain opinions and an identity that may be different from theirs.
It can take several years for parents and teens to adjust to their new roles, though. In the meantime, concentrate on communicating with your parents as best you can.
Sometimes this can feel impossible — like they just don't see your point of view and never will. But talking and expressing your opinions can help you gain more respect from your parents, and you may be able to reach compromises that make everyone happy. For example, if you are willing to clean your room in order to stay out an hour later, both you and your parents walk away with a good deal.
Keep in mind, too, that your parents were teens once and that, in most cases, they can relate to what you're going through.


text:
A Canadian mining company says a sophisticated criminal enterprise in Mexico stole an estimated $2 million to $3 million in metal concentrates through a subtle scheme that went on for months.
Telson Mining Corp. President Ralph Shearing says compromised truck drivers worked with thieves who foiled security measures while the material was being transported from the company's Campo Morado mine in the southern state of Guerrero to the port of Manzanillo on the Pacific coast.
Shearing said Tuesday that additional safety measures have resolved the problem. He says the thefts appear to have occurred over four to five months while the Vancouver-based company investigated why the quality of its product was measured at a lower level on arrival than when it left the mine.
READ MORE: US jury convicts El Chapo on all counts
The Associated Press


text:
Home > Canister Filter Spares > Aquis Advance 750 Canister Filter Spares
Brand: Genuine Aqua One Branded ProductRange: Aquarium Filtration
The Media tray O rings on each media tray in Aqua one canister filters and are important because they make sure that water is correctly chanelled through the canister filter and isn't allowed to escape into the wrong parts of the filter.
◾ Suits all Aquis and Advance Canister Filters◾ Takes seconds to replace ◾ Rinse and reuse◾Safe in fresh or seawater
I thought I might have to purchase a new filter but all parts available at aquarium parts good web site and service thank you Andrew
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I have only just had to replace these since purchasing my set up 8 years ago. Therefore overall quality of the product has been exceptionally good. Delivery very prompt and pricing reasonable. As the filter requires 2 of these I am surprised that they don't come as a packed item so as to encourage people to replace both at the one time.
Arrived today, Great web site, mobile app works well. Huge range, Well recommended
Item as described, quick delivery, efficient seller, pleased, many thanks
Thanks for all your help, good item would buy again what more can I say 100% 5***** thanks very much.
I'm so glad you stock these O rings that seal the inlet pipe on each media basket, as they perish over time. I got these for a Super Fish canister filter, as it uses the same parts as the Aqua One. Easy to order, quick response, speedy delivery. My filter is now up and running again.Thank you!
Seal is new, fitted first time, works well, came V quickly.
Advance 1050 / 1250 Complete Filter Media Renewal Kit£50.85 £35.99
Maintaining your Aqua One Canister Filter was never easier... Keep your Advance 1050 / 1250 Aquarium Filter in fantastic order with our great value genuine Aqua One Complete Filter Media Renewal Kit. The easiest and most cost effective filter maintenance solution, from Aquarium Parts and Aqua One!
Aqua One Advance Carb (450g) Premium Activated Carbon Aquarium Filter Media£11.99 £8.99
Advance Carb 450g Premium Activated Carbon will perform several important functions in your Aqua One set up. As well as removing tannin from the water - resulting in crystal clarity, it will remove many other toxins and pollutants leaving water pure.
Aqua One Aquis Advance 1050 / 1250 Canister Filter Accessory Pack£65.99 £37.99
This accessory box contains a pair of inlet and outlet taps, two 1.5m lengths of flexi hose, two inlet pipes, one spray bar, six suckers with pipe clips, 2 x 90 degree elbows with connectors, one inlet strainer and one duck billed outlet.
Aqua One Aquis Advance 1050 Canister Filter£119.99 £89.99
The Aquis Advance 1050 Canister Filter is a great replacement for an internal filter on setups of up to 250 litres. It offers far superior filtration with both mechanical and biological elements included and a 4 year warranty.
Aqua One BioNood Ceramic Cylinders (600g pack)£14.39 £9.99
Bionood ceramic cylinders are supplied with both Aqua One's Aquarium Series and their excellent Aquis and Advance Canister Filters because they offer such excellent biological filtration capacity. Change a few regularly to maintain an efficient and stable bacterial population.
Aqua One ChemiZee Zeolite Ammonia Removal media (500g)£8.39 £5.99
Ammonia is a killer in any aquarium. Chemizee is a naturally occurring mineral which will eliminate or reduce Ammonia in any setup. Change regularly for best effect.
Aqua One Medium Net Bag (16x12cm) suitable for all Aquarium Filter Media£3.19 £2.99
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Aquis Advance 1050 / 1250 Black Sponge Pad (2 pack) 35ppi - 404s£12.75 £11.99
The Aqua One Black sponge pads for the Advance 1050 / 1250 canister filter trap solids and provide a home for filtration bacteria.
Aquis Advance 1050 / 1250 Sponge Pad (2 pack) 15ppi - 403s£12.75 £10.99
The Aqua One sponge pads for the Advance 1050 / 1250 canister filter trap solids and provide a home for filtration bacteria.
Aquis Advance 1050 / 1250 Wool Pad (2 pack) - 403w£8.49 £7.99
The Aqua One polymer wool pads for the Advance 1050 / 1250 canister filter trap even the finest solids.
Filter Tap Set for Advance 1050 / 1250 Canister Filter£14.25 £9.65
Replacement tap set for the Aquis Advance 1050 / 1250 filters. Makes filter changes easy again with no leaks and puddles.
These taps should be replaced every 12 months an we recommend having a spare set available.
Impeller Set for Aquis Advance 1050 / 1250 Canister Filter - 403i£16.43 £13.69
Original Aqua One replacement impeller for Aquis Advance 1050 / 1250 Canister Filter
Intake Stainer for Aqua One Aquis & Advance Canister Filters£4.75
Original Aqua One Intake Stainer to suit all Aquis and Aquis Advance Canister Canister Filters. Simple, convenient push-fit.


text:
The shooter genre has typically been defined by its ability to deliver things like innovation and addictive gameplay, which is what makes a title like "Fuse" seem so unremarkable. It's not that the game, developed by the "Ratchet and Clank" team at Insomniac, is necessarily bad – it just feels rather mundane compared to some of the other shooters on the market. Heavily influenced by a number of likeminded titles (particularly Epic's "Gears of War" series), "Fuse" offers a fun but somewhat shallow experience, namely due to the fact that it never fully develops its own identity amidst the hodgepodge of game mechanics borrowed from much better titles.
The story is generic and not terribly engaging, and part of that problem is a result of the almost nonchalant handling of the way information is distributed to players over the course of the game. It gets to the point where unless you're tracking down and reading every single piece of supplemental intel hidden throughout each map, you probably won't have a very good sense of what's going on. So with that in mind, here's the official synopsis provided by Insomniac:
What happens when a violent civilization unearths advanced alien technology? In the not-so-distant-future, a new kind of arms race is about to begin. When rogue paramilitary company Raven discovers an alien energy source called Fuse deep within a classified government facility, they stage a daring mission to steal it. Soon, they use Fuse to advance their arsenal beyond anything the military has ever prepared for. Desperate to keep their discovery secret, the CIA calls in a small independent contact team called Overstrike 9 to neutralize the threat. But as Overstrike closes in on one enemy, another even more sinister reveals itself behind the curtain. And what was once an alien arms race becomes something much more deadly.
You can follow us on Twitter and Facebook for content updates. Also, sign up for our email list for weekly updates and check us out on Google+ as well.
Posted in: Game Reviews, Games
Tags: fuse, Fuse review, Insomniac Games


text:
- Those used in template type deduction.
- Those used in
type deduction. - Those used by
type deduction are the same as the rules for template type deduction, except that given a braced initializer such as { 1, 2, 3, 4 }
, auto
will deduce a std::initializer
list type (in the case of { 1, 2, 3, 4 }
, it will be std::initializer_list<int>
), while template type deduction will fail. (I have no idea why type deduction for auto
and for templates is not identical. If you know, please tell me!) The rules for decltype
are more complicated, because they don't just distinguish between lvalues and rvalues, they also distinguish between id-expressions (i.e., expressions consisting only of identifiers, e.g., variable or parameter names) and non-id-expressions. For details on all these rules, consult this article by Thomas Becker, this article by me, or this article by Herb Sutter (for auto
) and this one by Andrew Koenig (for decltype
).But that's for C++11, which, among the C++-obsessed, is rapidly approaching yawnworthiness. Fortunately, C++14 is on the horizon, and one of the new features sure to stifle even the strongest of yawns is the ability to declare types using
. This feature leads to two questions, only the first of which is rhetorical:- You can declare what?
- During type deduction for
, which type deduction rules are to be followed: those forauto
or those fordecltype
? Or doesdecltype(auto)
have its own set of type deduction rules?
uses the decltype
type deduction rules. The reason is that the type deduced by auto
for an initializing expression strips the ref-qualifiers (i.e., lvalue references and rvalue references) and top-level cv-qualifiers (i.e., const
s and volatile
s) from the expression, but decltype
does not. As a result, if you want the ref- and cv-qualifier stripping behavior, you can just write auto
. If you don't, C++14 gives you the option of writing decltype(auto)
.For variable declarations, this saves you the trouble of typing the initializing expression twice,
decltype(longAndComplexInitializingExpression) var = longAndComplexInitializingExpression; // C++11 decltype(auto) var = longAndComplexInitializingExpression; // C++14For
function return types (another new C++14 feature), it's even more convenient. Consider a function template, grab
, that authenticates a user and, assuming authentication doesn't throw, returns the result of indexing into some container-like object. Bearing in mind that some standard containers return lvalue references from their operator[]
operations (e.g., std::vector
, std::deque
), while others return proxy objects (e.g., std::vector<bool>
), and I believe it would be valid to define a container such that invoking operator[]
on an rvalue would yield an rvalue reference, the proper "generic" way to declare this function in C++11 would be (I think):template<typename ContainerType, typename IndexType> //C++11 auto grab(ContainerType&& container, IndexType&& index) -> decltype(std::forward<ContainerType>(container)[std::forward<IndexType>(index)]); { authenticateUser(); return std::forward<ContainerType>(container)[std::forward<IndexType>(index)]; }In C++14, I believe this can be simplified to the following, thanks to function return type deduction and
template<typename ContainerType, typename IndexType> // C++14 decltype(auto) grab(ContainerType&& container, IndexType&& index) { authenticateUser(); return std::forward<ContainerType>(container)[std::forward<IndexType>(index)]; }Scott


text:
OAKLAND (AP) — The Golden State Warriors are getting more for Dorell Wright after all.
The Warriors sent the small forward to the Philadelphia 76ers in a revised three-team trade that netted guard Jarrett Jack from the New Orleans Hornets on Wednesday night.
The Hornets received the draft rights to Edin Bavcic of Bosnia and Herzegovina from the Sixers in a salary-slashing move that clears space in a crowded backcourt. Philadelphia also got center Darryl Watkins from New Orleans.
Bavcic was acquired by the Sixers in a trade with Toronto in 2006 and is expected to remain in Europe next season.
The original proposed trade had the Warriors receiving Bavcic for Wright about 24 hours earlier. Instead, the Hornets hopped in the mix to acquire Bavcic — and become the team to shed salary — while handing the Warriors the veteran guard they have wanted this offseason to play alongside Stephen Curry and Klay Thompson.
"I guess that tells you how quickly things move in this league," Warriors general manager Bob Myers said by phone. "I think we're much happier with what is in place tonight than what was in place yesterday. But what was in place yesterday gave us flexibility. Tonight our team got better. Immediately got better."
The move will clear about $5.5 million in cap space for New Orleans, which is expected to match Phoenix's four-year, $58 million offer to restricted free agent Eric Gordon. The trade gives the Hornets more money to sign a center and also allows rookie combo guard Austin Rivers, the 10th overall pick out of Duke in last month's NBA draft, to see more playing time next season.
"This is difficult because Jarrett is a hard worker and his leadership on and off the court will be missed," Hornets general manager Dell Demps said. "This trade presents an opportunity for our young core to continue to develop."
The trade took more than a day to complete because of a series of other moves that paved the way for the complicated deal.
The Sixers used the amnesty clause on Elton Brand and the $18.1 million he's owed in the final season of a five-year contract — a move that had to happen for the Wright trade to go through.
Philadelphia also agreed to a two-year deal with forward Lavoy Allen, who averaged 4.1 points and 4.2 rebounds in his rookie season. The Sixers also signed center Spencer Hawes and agreed to a one-year deal with veteran swingman Nick Young, whose arrival allowed the team to part ways with reserve guard Lou Williams.
"We're very happy to get a player like Dorell Wright," Sixers president Rod Thorn said. "We think his outside shooting and all-around game will be a great addition to our team and we look forward to having him in Philadelphia."
Wright also becomes the 3-point threat needed after Philadelphia decided to not re-sign Jodie Meeks.
The 6-foot-9 Wright is due about $4 million in the final year of his contract— coincidentally negotiated by Myers, who is Wright's former agent. With so many one-year deals, the Sixers are clearly aiming to have plenty of money available to deal in the 2013 free agent market.
Now they also have a player who can make an immediate impact.
Wright averaged 16.4 points and started all 82 games during the 2010-11 season. He led the league in 3-pointers made (194) and finished third in voting for the NBA's Most Improved Player award behind Kevin Love and LaMarcus Aldridge.
But his playing time slipped under rookie coach Mark Jackson and so did his performance. Wright averaged 10.3 points and started 61 of 66 games during the lockout-shortened season.
After the Warriors selected small forwards Harrison Barnes seventh overall and Draymond Green at No. 35 in the draft, it became clear Wright's time with the Warriors was nearing an end. Golden State also has Richard Jefferson under contract for two more seasons and is hoping to re-sign restricted free agent Brandon Rush — likely using the money Wright freed up.
Jack averaged careers highs with 15.6 points and 6.3 assists last season and could challenge for the starting shooting guard spot held by Thompson, the Warriors' 11th overall pick in 2011. Jack also gives the Warriors some depth with the often-injured Curry recovering from his latest surgery on his right ankle.
"We feel like we solidified our backcourt," Myers said. "We've looked at him for a while from afar and never thought we'd have a chance to acquire him, never thought we'd be able to put something together to get it done."


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With Chávez's health in doubt, so is leadership of Latin American left
| Buenos Aires, Argentina; and Mexico City
Across Venezuela, Latin America, and even the globe, everyone is asking: when will Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez return to power, and if he doesn't, what's next?
The country's longtime leader was supposed to be inaugurated yesterday, but could not be sworn in because he remained in Cuba, where he is recovering from surgery. Instead, his allies rallied around the presidential palace to show support for the ailing head of state, who won a fourth term in October. Meanwhile, the opposition declared the postponement illegal (see our briefing on the constitutional debate).
Now supporters have gone home, and Mr. Chávez is still considered the president of Venezuela, according to a Supreme Court ruling that says he can take oath when he is well enough. Still in doubt, however, are Chávez's chances for recovery and what the recent health scare means for the "socialist revolution" that has been the hallmark of his administration.
For the past 14 years, Chávez has led a leftist faction across Latin America, and while his health and vacillations in oil prices and production have weakened his international clout in recent years, he remains the region's leftist figurehead.
If he is unable to return, who will take his place?
Many analysts say that it won't be a Venezuelan leader – neither Vice President Nicolas Maduro, who Chávez said would be his preferred candidate if he were unable to lead the nation, nor opposition leader Henrique Capriles, fits the bill. The former lacks the charisma, the latter the desire. Ricardo Sucre, a political analyst in Caracas, says that to take Chávez's place, one needs charm, wealth, and the will to lead. No leader in Latin America ticks all those boxes, he says.
"Chávez is Chávez," he says. "Venezuela became a reference point for leftism in the world because there were the conditions to do so ... It's not something that is easily transferable."
The Argentine Chávez?
On the busy streets of Buenos Aires, supporters of Cristina Fernández de Kirchner, the nation's fiery president, say that she could be poised to take up the leftist flag in Latin America if Chávez is unable to return to office.
Chávez regularly praises Ms. Kirchner's late husband and predecessor, Néstor Kirchner, who made a stand against the IMF and the neoliberal policies of the so-called "Washington consensus" when he came to power in 2003. Kirchner has pursued those left-wing model with nationalizations, extensive welfare programs, and a controversial law that seeks to end media monopolies.
Mr. Kirchner's 2010 death triggered a mass outpouring of grief and and propelled his widow to re-election in 2011. Her aggressive rhetoric intensified in recent months as she condemned an American judge's ruling that her government should pay holdout creditors from Argentina's 2002 default, calling it "legal colonialism." (For more on that story, see: New York judge's ruling sparks nationalist surge in Argentina.) Domestically, she has accused the judiciary of representing the interests of corporations.
"There's no better candidate for the position than Kirchner," says María Castex, a translator from Buenos Aires. "She shares a lot of Chávez's ideals and has that strong character. She's omnipresent in our lives."
"It's possible that Kirchner could take on Chávez's role, but she would have to project herself more at a regional level," says Leo Cristiani, a student from Buenos Aires.
Indeed, there are checks to her power, including term limits on her presidency, which ends in 2015. Government officials have indicated she will look to remove that limit through constitutional reform, but that would require her to win two-thirds of Congress in October's legislative elections, an unlikely outcome.
"Chávez and [Néstor] Kirchner began the Pink Tide and [Chávez's] death would be another huge blow to the region," says Martín Alalu, a political analyst at the University of Buenos Aires. "Fernández [de Kirchner] has the populist discourse, but she hits her term limit in 2015."
"Kirchnerism is trying to copy some of the formulas of chavismo, but it's being halted," says Colette Capriles, a political analyst at the Simón Bolívar University in Caracas, referring to recent social unrest and an ongoing battle with the courts over the media law.
Other choices
Mr. Alalu says that Rafael Correa in Ecuador, perhaps the most charismatic of the current Latin American leaders, is the natural successor of Chávez. "He has Chávez's antagonistic, anti-American discourse, oil reserves, and a leadership style that promotes a plebiscitary democracy," he says, referring to the 2009 referendum in Venezuela to remove presidential term limits and the 2008 vote to reform Ecuador's constitution.
But his "oil wealth" does not compare to that of Venezuela, says Mr. Sucre. The only leader who might possibly have the economic might to lead the left is Brazil's Dilma Rousseff, he says, but, unlike her predecessor, Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, she has shown little interest in being a leftist figurehead,.
Chávez's most loyal allies are recipients of his oil wealth, and there are many internal differences among them. Ms. Capriles says the idea of solidarity between the left-leaning countries in the region, formalized during the 2005 Summit of the Americas in Argentina, is a myth. "There's no ideological union," she says. "The other countries are simply beneficiaries of Chávez's financial support."
Subsequently, she says, the leaders of a post-Chávez Latin America will not be concerned about who replaces him as a figurehead, but how to maintain close relations.
Chávez, for example, bought up Argentine debt in 2005, helping the first President Kirchner pay off $10 billion to the IMF, and continued to lend. "Argentina will always be at Venezuela's side," says Rafael Follonier, an Argentine government official sent to Havana and believed to be close to Chávez's inner circle. "Its government's stability is important for ... South American integration."
That might change in a post-Chávez climate.
"Venezuela acquired unexpected political significance thanks to the popular leadership of Hugo Chávez, who crossed Venezuelan borders" with the help of oil prices, says Julio Burdman, head of politics and international relations at the University of Belgrano in Buenos Aires. "But it's a small country in other respects." Without Chávez as protagonist, he says, the exterior relations of Venezuela could change.
That is something that many Venezuelans agree with. "There's nobody like Chávez," says Kei Campbell, a lawyer from Caracas. "He has the talent of being able to move and convince the masses. [Vice President] Maduro doesn't have that, nor … anybody else."


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This bi-monthly cancer support group provides participants with the opportunity to explore their experience with cancer in a safe group setting with a trained social worker and to connect with others who are facing a similar challenge. This group is designed specifically for individuals that have been diagnosed with cancer.
The Cancer Support Group meets Bi-Monthly on Mondays from 6:00-7:30pm.
Upcoming Sessions:
Jennifer Bires is a licensed clinical social worker, who works with people affected by cancer. She received her Master's in Social Work from Washington University in St. Louis. Jennifer knows how distressing a cancer diagnosis can be for patients and their families. Her goal as an oncology social worker is to help patients and family members adjust to the emotional impact of a diagnosis. Jennifer specializes in working with young adults, caregivers and patients who have advanced disease. She strives to help patients and families maintain a high quality of life in the face of their illness.


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use Tk::Tree;$tree = $parent->Tree(?options?);
The Tree class is derived from the HList class and inherits all the methods, options and subwidgets of its super-class. A Tree widget is not scrolled by default.STANDARD OPTIONS
Tree supports all the standard options of an HList widget. See Tk::options for details on the standard options.WIDGET-SPECIFIC OPTIONS
- Name: browseCmd
- Class: BrowseCmd
- Switch: -browsecmd
Specifies a callback to call whenever the user browses on an entry (usually by single-clicking on the entry). The callback is called with one argument, the pathname of the entry. - Name: closeCmd
- Class: CloseCmd
- Switch: -closecmd
Specifies a callback to call whenever an entry needs to be closed (See ``BINDINGS'' below). This method is called with one argument, the pathname of the entry. This method should perform appropriate actions to close the specified entry. If the -closecmd option is not specified, the default closing action is to hide all child entries of the specified entry. - Name: command
- Class: Command
- Switch: -command
Specifies a callback to call whenever the user activates an entry (usually by double-clicking on the entry). The callback is called with one argument, the pathname of the entry. - Name: ignoreInvoke
- Class: IgnoreInvoke
- Switch: -ignoreinvoke
A Boolean value that specifies when a branch should be opened or closed. A branch will always be opened or closed when the user presses the (+) and (-) indicators. However, when the user invokes a branch (by doublc-clicking or pressing <Return>), the branch will be opened or closed only if -ignoreinvoke is set to false (the default setting). - Name: openCmd
- Class: OpenCmd
- Switch: -opencmd
Specifies a callback to call whenever an entry needs to be opened (See ``BINDINGS'' below). This method is called with one argument, the pathname of the entry. This method should perform appropriate actions to open the specified entry. If the -opencmd option is not specified, the default opening action is to show all the child entries of the specified entry.
The Tree method creates a new window and makes it into a Tree widget and return a reference to it. Additional options, described above, may be specified on the command line or in the option database to configure aspects of the Tree widget such as its cursor and relief.The Tree widget can be used to display hierarchical data in a tree form. The user can adjust the view of the tree by opening or closing parts of the tree.
To display a static tree structure, you can add the entries into the Tree widget and hide any entries as desired. Then you can call the autosetmode method. This will set up the Tree widget so that it handles all the open and close events automatically. the demonstration program Tixish/examples/perl-tix-tree).
The above method is not applicable if you want to maintain a dynamic tree structure, i.e, you do not know all the entries in the tree and you need to add or delete entries subsequently. To do this, you should first create the entries in the Tree widget. Then, use the setmode method to indicate the entries that can be opened or closed, and use the -opencmd and -closecmd options to handle the opening and closing events. (Please see the demonstration program Tixish/examples/perl-tix-dyntree).
Use either
$parent->Scrolled('Tree', ... );
$parent->ScrlTree( ... );
to create a scrolled Tree. See Tk::Scrolled for details.
The Tree method creates a widget object. This object supports the configure and cget methods described in Tk::options which can be used to enquire and modify the options described above. The widget also inherits all the methods provided by the generic Tk::Widget class.The following additional methods are available for Tree widgets:
- $tree->add_pathimage(treeRegExp [, openImg, closeImg])
This method defines images for a given path (images must be in xpm
format). The path can be determined by a simplified regular
expression. There are just three metasymbols:
- ^
- at the beginning of the "treeRegExp" same as in Perl regular expressions
- *
- anything
- $
- at the end of the "TreeRegExp", the same as in Perl regular expressions
matches "root", "root.foo", "root.bar", but not "foo.root"
matches all paths containing "root.<anything>.class", but not "root.<anything>.<anything>.class" "*" is one part of the path. If you want to use a wildcard for two steps, you have to use "*.*".
This matches all path with "class" at the end.
- $tree->autosetmode
- This method calls the setmode method for all the entries in this Tree widget: if an entry has no child entries, its mode is set to none. Otherwise, if the entry has any hidden child entries, its mode is set to open; otherwise its mode is set to close.
- $tree->child_entries([$path][,$depth])
This method returns in list context an array that contains all
pathnames of subentries within the given path. In scalar context it
returns the number of subentries in the given path.
Example: root | foo | bar | | bar1 | | bar2 my @childentries = $tree->child_entries('root.bar'); # returns (root.bar.bar1, root.bar.bar2) my $nr_of_subentries = $tree->child_entries('root',2); # returns 4
If $path is omitted, all it is assumed, that the entry above 'root' is meant. $depth defines the numbers of levels.
- $tree->close(entryPath)
- Close the entry given by entryPath if its mode is close.
- $tree->getmode(entryPath)
- Returns the current mode of the entry given by entryPath.
- $tree->open(entryPath)
- Open the entry given by entryPath if its mode is open.
- $tree->setmode(entryPath, mode)
- This method is used to indicate whether the entry given by entryPath has children entries and whether the children are visible. mode must be one of open, close or none. If mode is set to open, a (+) indicator is drawn next to the entry. If mode is set to close, a (-) indicator is drawn next to the entry. If mode is set to none, no indicators will be drawn for this entry. The default mode is none. The open mode indicates the entry has hidden children and this entry can be opened by the user. The close mode indicates that all the children of the entry are now visible and the entry can be closed by the user.
The basic mouse and keyboard bindings of the Tree widget are the same as the bindings of the HList widget. In addition, the entries can be opened or closed under the following conditions:- [1]
- If the mode of the entry is open, it can be opened by clicking on its (+) indicator.
- [2]
- If the mode of the entry is close, it can be closed by clicking on its (-) indicator.
Perl/TK version by Chris Dean <[email protected]>. Original Tcl/Tix version by Ioi Kim Lam.Additions by Renee Baecker <[email protected]>


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Feb. 7, 2013
THE FLATS – The Georgia Tech Yellow Jackets have announced that Tech Hall of Famer and current New York Yankees first baseman Mark Teixeira will throw out the ceremonial first pitch for baseball's season-opener on Friday, February 15 versus Akron at 4 p.m.
A 10-year pro, Teixeira is a five-time Gold Glove award winner, a three-time All-Star, and a World Champion on the 2009 Yankees club. He's entering his fifth year in New York, after previous stops in Los Angeles and Atlanta. He made his MLB debut in 2003 with Texas.
"Mark has been a tremendous supporter of not only our baseball program, but the Institute as a whole for many years," said head coach Danny Hall. "We are very fortunate to have guys like Mark, who continue to remain loyal to the Yellow Jackets."
In his time on the Flats (1999-2001), Teixeira was a career .409 hitter with 36 home runs and 165 RBI in 140 career games. He helped lead the Jackets to both an ACC Championship and a Super Regional appearance during the 2000 season. The decorated third baseman received numerous awards as a collegiate ballplayer, including the Dick Howser Trophy in 2000 as the national player of the year. He was a first-team All-American, the ACC Player of the Year, a two-time first-team All-ACC pick and the ACC Rookie of the Year.
He was drafted by Texas with the fifth overall pick in 2001.
Teixeira has maintained a strong relationship with Georgia Tech, which has included the funding for the Mark C. Teixeira endowment scholarship in 2009. Tech added his No. 23 to the Honored Numbers wall at Russ Chandler Stadium in 2006 and, in 2011, inducted him into the Georgia Tech Athletics Hall of Fame.
For tickets, call the Georgia Tech Ticket Office at 1-888-TECH-TIX or visit ramblinwreck.com/tickets. For exclusive information on Georgia Tech, follow the Jackets on Twitter (@GT_Baseball) and like us on Facebook (facebook.com/gtbaseball).


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The Oppression of the Hills
AMONG the cottages that are scattered through the hills of County Wicklow I have met with many people who show in a singular way the influence of a particular locality. These people live for the most part beside old roads and pathways where hardly one man passes in the day, and look out all the year on unbroken barriers of heath. At every season heavy rains fall for often a week at a time, till the thatch drips with water stained to a dull chestnut, and the floor in the cottages seems to be going back to the condition of the bogs near it. Then the clouds break, and there is a night of terrific storm from the south-west--all the larches that survive in these places are bowed and twisted towards the point where the sun rises in June--when the winds come down through the narrow glens with the congested whirl and roar of a torrent, breaking at times for sudden moments of silence that keep up the tension of the mind. At such times the people crouch all night over a few sods of turf and the dogs howl, in the lanes.
When the sun rises there is a morning of almost supernatural radiance, and even the oldest men and women come out into the air with the joy of children who have recovered from a fever. In the evening it is raining again. This peculiar climate, acting on a population that is already lonely and dwindling, has caused or increased a tendency to nervous depression among the people, and every degree of sadness, from that of the man who is merely mournful to that of the man who has spent half his life in the madhouse, is common among these hills.
Not long ago in a desolate glen in the south of the county I met two policemen driving an ass-cart with a coffin on it, and a little further on I stopped an old man and asked him what had happened.
'This night three weeks,' he said, 'there was a poor fellow below reaping in the glen, and in the evening he had two glasses of whisky with some other lads. Then some excitement took him, and he threw off his clothes and ran away into the hills. There was great rain that night, and I suppose the poor creature lost his way, and was the whole night perishing in the rain and darkness. In the morning they found his naked footmarks on some mud half a mile above the road, and again where you go up by a big stone. Then there was nothing known of him till last night, when they found his body on the mountain, and it near eaten by the crows.'
Then he went on to tell me how different the country had been when he was a young man.
'We had nothing to eat at that time,' he said, 'but milk and stirabout and potatoes, and there was a fine constitution you wouldn't meet this day at all. I remember when you'd see forty boys and girls below there on a Sunday evening, playing ball and diverting themselves; but now all this country is gone lonesome and bewildered, and there's no man knows what ails it.'
There are so few girls left in these neighbourhoods that one does not often meet with women that have grown up unmarried. I know one, however, who has lived by herself for fifteen years in a tiny hovel near a cross roads much frequented by tinkers and ordinary tramps. As she has no one belonging to her, she spends a good deal of her time wandering through the country, and I have met her in every direction, often many miles from her own glen. 'I do be so afeard of the tramps,' she said to me one evening. 'I live all alone, and what would I do at all if one of them lads was to come near me? When my poor mother was dying, "Now, Nanny," says she, "don't be living on here when I am dead," says she; "it'd be too lonesome." And now I wouldn't wish to go again' my mother, and she dead--dead or alive I wouldn't go again' my mother--but I'm after doing all I can, and I can't get away by any means.' As I was moving on she heard, or thought she heard, a sound of distant thunder.
'Ah, your honour,' she said, 'do you think it's thunder we'll be having? There's nothing I fear like the thunder. My heart isn't strong--I do feel it--and I have a lightness in my head, and often when I do be excited with the thunder I do be afeard I might die there alone in the cottage and no one know it. But I do hope that the Lord--bless His holy name!--has something in store for me. I've done all I can, and I don't like going again' my mother and she dead. And now good evening, your honour, and safe home.'
Intense nervousness is common also with much younger women. I remember one night hearing some one crying out and screaming in the house where I was staying. I went downstairs and found it was a girl who had been taken in from a village a few miles away to help the servants. That afternoon her two younger sisters had come to see her, and now she had been taken with a panic that they had been drowned going home through the bogs, and she was crying and wailing, and saying she must go to look for them. It was not thought fit for her to leave the house alone so late in the evening, so I went with her. As we passed down a steep hill of heather, where the nightjars were clapping their wings in the moonlight, she told me a long story of the way she had been frightened. Then we reached a solitary cottage on the edge of the bog, and as a light was still shining in the window, I knocked at the door and asked if they had seen or heard anything. When they understood our errand three half-dressed generations came out to jeer at us on the doorstep.
'Ah, Maggie,' said the old woman, 'you're a cute one. You're the girl likes a walk in the moonlight. Whist your talk of them big lumps of childer, and look at Martin Edward there, who's not six, and he can go through the bog five times in an hour and not wet his feet.'
My companion was still unconvinced, so we went on. The rushes were shining in the moonlight, and one flake of mist was lying on the river. We looked into one bog-hole, and then into another, where a snipe rose and terrified us. We listened: a cow was chewing heavily in the shadow of a bush, two dogs were barking on the side of a hill, and there was a cart far away upon the road. Our teeth began to chatter with the cold of the bog air and the loneliness of the night. I could see that the actual presence of the bog had shown my companion the absurdity of her fears, and in a little while we went home.
The older people in County Wicklow, as in the rest of Ireland, still show a curious affection for the landed classes wherever they have lived for a generation or two upon their property. I remember an old woman, who told me, with tears streaming on her face, how much more lonely the country had become since the 'quality' had gone away, and gave me a long story of how she had seen her landlord shutting up his house and leaving his property, and of the way he had died afterwards, when the 'grievance' of it broke his heart. The younger people feel differently, and when I was passing this landlord's house, not long afterwards, I found these lines written in pencil on the door-post:
In the days of rack-renting
And land-grabbing so vile
A proud, heartless landlord
Lived here a great while.
When the League it was started,
And the land-grabbing cry,
To the cold North of Ireland
He had for to fly.
A year later the door-post had fallen to pieces, and the inscription with it.


text:
$20 Indian Android Tablet Have a look
Thursday, November 29, 2012
Richard Harris |
A $20 Android tablet? This thing has to be complete junk! And how about a $2 / mo unlimited data plan? Sound way to good to be true? Maybe not, the results from this $20 tablet might really surprise you.
The Ubislate 7ci, also known as the Aakash2, is the latest gadget from Datawind, a Canadian company that's spent seven years trying to find the ideal market for some really neat data-optimization technology. On devices like the PocketSurfer andPocketSurfer 2, Datawind showed that it can display desktop Web pages quickly with low-cost devices on super-low-bandwidth networks like 2G GPRS. But it never gained major market traction in the Western world, especially as 3G and 4G networks have spread.
India may be the place that really needs Datawind's expertise. Datawind's enthusiastic founder, Suneet Singh Tuli, just inked a deal with the Indian government to subsidize his $40.41 tablet by half for up to 220 million Indian students. That means Indian teachers and kids will get a Web-capable device for $20 up front.
The Indian government is psyched about e-learning in part because of the very uneven quality of Indian education. Especially in rural areas, Indian teachers often aren't well-trained, and access to ebooks and video learning over the Internet could dramatically improve the quality of education and help stamp out illiteracy.
The $20 tablet requires Wi-Fi, though, so it'll start out on university and high school campuses that already have Wi-Fi, Tuli said. Those kinds of places also have power to charge the tablets' sealed-in batteries.
The cellular version of the tablet is even more intriguing to me. Tuli made a deal with an Indian carrier, Aircel, for an unlimited-data GPRS plan at R98 ($2) per month. That experience would be pretty awful except for Datawind's special Ubisoft browser, which as I've seen before, can actually show decent Web pages with load times of about five seconds on GPRS. (That's about a tenth of the time it would take with a normal browser.) Our PocketSurfer 2 review has some hands-on details of the technology and explains how it works.
Technology breaks through when it costs less than 20 percent of average monthly income, Tuli said. The cellular version of the Ubislate costs $6 more, but using Tuli's math, this tablet is still affordable to people who make around $3,000 a year. It even works as a phone.
Tuli also said a completely free data plan could be in the cards. Once you're down to $2 per month, it's possible to subsidize that cost with advertising and sponsorship deals, he said. Datawind already pulled off that trick in the U.K., where it bundles some free Internet access with its Ubisurfer and Pocketsurfer devices.
Does It Feel Good In The Hand?
So, what do you get for $40? Not much, but c'mon.
This isn't an off-the-shelf Chinese Android tablet, although it's indistinguishable from some of the models you'd find in a shopping mall in Shenzhen. According to Tuli, the processor is Chinese, the touch screen is made in India and the tablet is finally assembled and programmed in India.
The Ubislate 7ci is a dull slate gray, about the size of the original Amazon Kindle Fire$199.00 at Amazon. It has a plastic screen and a gray plastic back. Turn it on, and the low-quality 800-by-480 LCD lights up. This thing doesn't have a viewing angle as much as a viewing point, and the touch screen takes some noticeable pressure to activate.
There's a VGA camera right above the screen on the front, and a microSD card slot (labeled "TF slot" for TransFlash, an old name for MicroSD) adorns the back. The tablet has about 2.6GB of free internal memory divided into two partitions. Wi-Fi 2.4Ghz networking is on board, but no Bluetooth; the cellular model will have GPS.
The Ubislate runs stock Android 4.0.4 with the basic apps, adding Google Play, Gmail, and a proprietary media player. The Ubisoft browser didn't come on my unit, but it'll be on the models sold in India. Singh said to consider this a fully open-source tablet, hackable by any Indian who wants to develop software for it.
I ran our benchmarks on the tablet, and the good news is, the benchmarks run. The bad news is that as expected, they run slowly. The Ubislate 7ci has a 1Ghz AllWinner Cortex-A8 processor, so functions like an entry-level smartphone. Scrolling can be laggy and sometimes screen transitions are slow. The browser was also really slow, even over Wi-Fi. Most notably, though, all the usual apps run: the Web browser, email, games. In other words, if it's this or no Internet, this will get you on the Internet.
Why This Might Make a Difference
Yes, other companies are making very cheap tablets. Our comment boards get periodically spammed by partisans of a Chinese firm called Ainol, whose Novo 7 Basic we looked at earlier this year. Datawind's advantage is even lower prices and much better marketing. Companies like Ainol often don't have anyone on staff who speak fluent English, and their executive teams rarely leave China. Their non-Chinese websites are rife with grammatical and spelling errors. They're good at marketing within their large home country, but awful outside it.
Datawind, on the other hand, has Tuli, a fast-talking, wide-smiling Sikh who, with his traditional turban and beard, comes off as the charismatic guru of cheap tablets. I met him outside a ceremony supporting his tablet at the United Nations. He's a deal-maker, a glad-hander, and he spreads enthusiasm.
Will the $40 tablet come to the U.S.? Maybe, but Tuli isn't making it a priority. I agree that he shouldn't. We're doing just fine with our $199 tablets, and setting up tech support and repair channels for U.S. devices is expensive.
But in my mind, India is more than a good enough market for this inexpensive tech. The world's biggest democracy has shown great promise, but it's been held back by education and infrastructure problems. If Tuli can help unlock the potential of Indian kids, it'll be good for the whole world.
Read more: http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2412642,00.as...
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text:
This article is more than 1 year old
Google gives its Voice to all Americans
'We are the ultimate in human communication'
Google Voice — the new-age telephony thingy that lets you attach a single phone number to multiple phones, turn your voice mails into emails, and thumb your nose at AT&T — is now available to everyone in the US.
Previously, the service was invite-only. "After lots of testing and tweaking, we're excited to open up Google Voice to the public, no invitation required," the company said today in a blog post.
Google Voice was originally built by GrandCentral Communications, a startup that Mountain View purchased in June 2007. The service lets you set up a single number that will ring all your phones — from your cell phone to your home phone to your office phone. It automatically transcribes your voice mails. And it offers free calls and texts within the US and Canada, as well as low-cost international calls.
Google says that over one million people are currently using the thing.
US telcom giant AT&T isn't too happy with the service. Clearly, Google Voice is a direct financial threat to AT&T's phone service, but Big Phone also claims that Google Voice makes Google a net neutrality hypocrite. Big Phone says that in blocking certain high-priced calls to rural areas, Google Voice is violating the fourth principle of FCC's famous 2005 internet policy statement, which says "consumers are entitled to competition among network providers, application and service providers, and content providers."
AT&T isn't allowed to block such calls, so it's arguing that Google has undermined competition.
Famously, Mountain View built a Google Voice application for the iPhone, but it was banned by the Apple App Store police. AT&T is the iPhone's exclusive carrier in the US.
So Google built a mobile web-based application instead. The company has also integrated a Google Voice voicemail player with Gmail — you can forward voicemails to your email inbox — while offering a Google Voice Chrome extension and a tool for sending SMS texts to email.
What's more, you now have the option of using your existing phone number with the service.
According to Google, Google Voice is the pinnacle of modern human communication:


text: Dear List, For those of you interested: _____________________________________________________________ ES³ 2012 4th International Workshop on Corpora for Research on EMOTION SENTIMENT & SOCIAL SIGNALS Satellite of LREC 2012, ELRA Full Day Workshop on Saturday, 26 May 2012, Istanbul, Turkey http://emotion-research.net/sigs/speech-sig/es12 _____________________________________________________________ Scope The fourth instalment of the workshop series on Corpora for Research on Emotion held at LREC aims at further cross-fertilisation between the highly related communities of emotion and affect processing based on acoustics of the speech signal, and linguistic analysis of spoken and written text, i.e., the field of sentiment analysis including figurative languages such as irony, sarcasm, satire, metaphor, parody, etc. At the same time, the workshop opens up for the emerging field of behavioural and social signal processing including signals such as laughs, smiles, sighs, hesitations, consents, etc. Besides data from human-system interaction, dyadic and human-to-human data, its labelling and suited models as well as benchmark analysis and evaluation results on suited and relevant corpora are invited. By this, we aim at bridging between these larger and highly connected fields: Emotion and sentiment are part of social communication, and social signals are highly relevant in helping to better understand affective behaviour and its context. For example, understanding of a subject's personality is needed to make better sense of observed emotional patterns. At the same time, non-linguistic behaviour such as laughter and linguistic analysis can give further insight into the state or personality trait of the subject. All these fields further share a unique trait: Genuine emotion, sentiment and social signals are hard to collect, ambiguous to annotate, and tricky to distribute due to privacy reasons. In addition, the few available corpora suffer from a number of issues owing to the peculiarity of these young and emerging fields: As in no related task, different forms of modelling exist, and ground truth is never solid due to the often highly different perception of the mostly very few annotators. Due to data sparseness, cross-validation without strict partitioning including development sets and without strict separation of speakers and subjects throughout partitioning are frequently seen. Topics include, but are not limited to: + Novel corpora of affective speech in audio & multimodal data + Novel corpora for sentiment & opinion mining analysis + Novel corpora of audio & multimodal behavioural & social signals + Novel corpora with combined annotation of the above + Analysis in speech, language & multimodal cues + Rich emotion and personality: dimensional, complex, categories, etc. + Figurative languages: irony, sarcasm, satire, metaphor, parody, etc. + Social signals: laughs, smiles, sighs, hesitations, consents, etc. + Discussion of models for emotion, sentiment & social signals + Measures for quantitative corpus quality assessment + Standardisation of corpora & labels for cross-corpus testing + Real-life applications of language & multimodal resources + Long-term recordings of interactional & dyadic communication + Rich & novel annotations such as inclusion of situational context + Communications on testing protocols + Evaluations on novel or multiple corpora + New methods for community or distributed annotation + Unsupervised learning techniques to exploit additional data + Synthesis of data for learning in sparse data tasks + Resources for underrepresented languages & cultures + Evaluations on novel or multiple corpora _____________________________________________________________ Important Dates 1500-2000 words abstract submission deadline 20 February 2012 https://www.softconf.com/lrec2012/ES3-2012/ Notification of acceptance 12 March 2012 Camera ready paper 20 March 2012 Workshop 26 May 2012 _____________________________________________________________ Organisers Laurence Devillers U. Paris-Sorbonne 4, France Björn Schuller TUM, Germany Anton Batliner FAU, Germany Paolo Rosso U. Politèc. Valencia, Spain Ellen Douglas-Cowie Queen's Univ. Belfast, UK Roddy Cowie Queen's Univ. Belfast, UK Catherine Pelachaud CNRS - LTCI, France _____________________________________________________________ Program Committee Vered Aharonson, AFEKA, Israel Alexandra Balahur, EC JRCentre, Italy Felix Burkhardt, Deut. Telekom, Germany Carlos Busso, UT Dallas, USA Rafael Calvo, University Sydney, Australia Erik Cambria, Nat. U. Singapore, Singapore Antonio Camurri, Univ. Genova, Italy Mohamed Chetouani, Univ. Paris 6, France Thierry Dutoit, Univ. Mons, Belgium Julien Epps, U. New South Wales, Australia Anna Esposito, IIASS, Italy Hatice Gunes, Queen Mary University, UK Catherine Havasi, MIT Media Lab., USA Bing Liu, Univ. Illinois at Chicago, USA Florian Metze, CMU, USA Shrikanth Narayanan, USC, USA Maja Pantic, Imperial College London, UK Antonio Reyes, Univ. Politèc. Valencia, Spain Fabien Ringeval, Univ. Fribourg, Switzerland Peter Robinson, Univ. Cambridge, UK Florian Schiel, LMU, Germany Jianhua Tao, Chinese Acad. Sciences, China José A. Troyano, Univ. de Sevilla, Spain Tony Veale, UCD, Ireland Alessandro Vinciarelli, Univ. Glasgow, UK Haixun Wang, Microsoft Research Asia, China _____________________________________________________________ Submission Policy Submitted abstracts of papers for oral and poster must consist of about 1500-2000 words. Final submissions should be 4 pages long, must be in English, and follow the submission guidelines at LREC 2012. When submitting a paper from the START page, authors will be asked to provide essential information about resources (in a broad sense, i.e. also technologies, standards, evaluation kits, etc.) that have been used for the work described in the paper or are a new result of your research. For further information on this new initiative, please refer to http://www.lrec-conf.org/lrec2012/?LRE-Map-2012 http://emotion-research.net/sigs/speech-sig/es12 Contact: [log in to unmask] _____________________________________________________________ Thank you for excusing cross-postings. ___________________________________________ Dr. Björn Schuller Technische Universität München Institute for Human-Machine Communication D-80333 München Germany +49-(0)89-289-28548 [log in to unmask] www.mmk.ei.tum.de/~sch ___________________________________________ --------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe, send an empty email to mailto:[log in to unmask] For further details of CHI lists see http://listserv.acm.org ---------------------------------------------------------------